US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recently published a ruling that every company considering shifting production from China to Mexico (or Canada) as part of a strategy to mitigate the impact of the Section 301 duties should be aware of. In Headquarters Ruling H300226 (September 13, 2018), CBP concluded that, while the NAFTA Marking Rules (19 C.F.R. Part 102) are used to determine the country of origin of articles imported into the United States from Mexico for marking purposes, the traditional substantial transformation test is used to determine the country of origin of articles for Section 301 duty purposes.
As you will see from the ruling, parts of a motor were imported into Mexico for assembly. The assembly operation in Mexico was sufficient to satisfy the applicable NAFTA Marking Rule, such that the finished article was considered to a “product of Mexico” for marking purposes. CBP, however, then went on to say that the traditional substantial transformation test is used for purposes of “antidumping, countervailing, or other safeguard measures[.]” CBP then applied the traditional substantial transformation test to the facts and concluded that the Mexican assembly operations were not sufficient to confer origin and, therefore, the finished motor imported into the United States was a “product of China” for Section 301 purposes. So, in short, the product had to be marked to indicate that it was of Mexican origin, but the importer had to pay the Section 301 duty applicable to Chinese-origin articles.
This ruling highlights a few important points. First, while the traditional substantial transformation test and the NAFTA Marking Rules are meant to embody the same origin principles, they do not always produce the same result due to the different nature of the tests (i.e., the traditional substantial transformation test is subjective; whereas the NAFTA Marking Rules are objective). Second, for purposes of section 301, the traditional substantial transformation test must be used even if the goods are imported from an FTA-partner country (e.g., Mexico, Canada, Singapore, etc.). The NAFTA Marking Rules may be helpful to that analysis, but are not determinative. Finally, CBP is willing to live with this seemingly absurd result (i.e., an article marked “Product of Mexico” being subject to duties applicable to “products of China”).
Author: Ted Murphy.
